Metroid Next: The Torch
by Moonraker One
Summary: Many expected greatness from Veshna, the daughter of Samus Aran. But her mother's metroid DNA causes her to be frail and weak. So, what happens when space pirates return, and a legendary alien armor is involved? CROSSOVER WITH GUYVER
1. Chapter 1

Metroid Next: The Torch

by Moonraker One

CHAPTER ONE

"Just a little bit higher!"

An audibly powerful yet aged feminine voice cried out. The command came in response to the faltering physicality of a late teen young woman with long sandy-blonde hair. A metal bar came up and down in response to the anguished force applied from underneath. Young Veshna Aran pushed with as much velocity and pressure as her fragile body could muster. Her arm muscles burned from the overwhelming demand requested by the weight device. Sweat poured as she began to shake as the bar inched higher towards the beginning point. She'd already gritted her teeth and ignored the screaming pain in her legs, and she struggled still.

"Come on, dear!" This time, the yell of motivation came from a masculine voice. "I know you can manage!"

"I...I'm trying, now!" She groaned, demanding one final surge of her muscles, which regretfully seemed to want to decline. "I'm trying! Arrgh!" One final shout, and she got the necessary amount of pressure out of her frail muscles.

The mother, Samus, a famous figure in her own right, approached and patted the panting young girl on the shoulders. "Dear, you've done wonderfully! That's a better record than last time." Her hair showed very faint impressions of gray in her hair as she approached her mid-fifties. It had been a good ten years since she'd hung up her power suit. Good circumstances had lent their luck to her and her desire for peace. She didn't know conclusively if she'd wiped out the last of the space pirates, but if they still lived, they hadn't bugged her in years. Next to her, a man of similar age with brown hair and a dark goatee stood, his arm wrapped around his wife. He, Xanman Mukam, had been a soldier in the galactic military for quite a time, and had met his legendary wife during one of her later missions, during the Strife of R3-281. He had a scar on his left abdomen from where he'd taken a plasma shot for another of his men.

Veshna sighed. "No matter how much I try, I'm still too frail to beat any of your records, mom!" She sat down at a rest station and drank her controlled electrolyte beverage. "Didn't any of your modified Chozo DNA make it through to me? I'm eighteen. I should be stronger and more durable than I am." She'd had this problem for quite some time; she wanted so much more than her imbalance-ridden body would provide.

Samus shook her head and embraced her daughter. "Honey, don't try to be better than me. I've been to places you wouldn't want to have nightmares about. Besides, your body is a unique problem." She paused to contemplate how tactfully to say what needed to be explained. "You might've gotten the Chozo DNA that makes me more athletic than a human could achieve, you also have the Metroid DNA I have that was put there to keep me from succumbing to that problem I told you about. In response, you have a Metroid organ just below your stomach that causes your body to be weak." She hoped her daughter wouldn't take it to mean she was inferior somehow.

"But mom, the injections keep the organ from functioning—which would kill me—but they also make me easily prone to injuries. Isn't there anything that can make me, you know, stronger?" Tears started to come down. "I...I've always dreamed of wearing your power suit into combat one day! It's never going to happen as weak as I am!" She drew closer and tightly embraced her mother. To Samus, she'd felt stronger grips from cancer patients.

_Oh dear_, Samus thought. _The resistance weight machine was only set to 45 pounds. That's only a two pound increase from last time._ She avoided wearing her concern on her face. She returned the embrace, taking care not to hurt her daughter. "Oh, Veshna, don't dream like that. It's not that it's not a good dream to have, it's just that I had to wear the power suit to kill things. It's a weapon of war. In these times of peace, I don't have to wear it anymore because things are nice and peaceful. Just enjoy your life. Don't worry about proving anything to me. You're my daughter."

"But, how can I be an Aran if I'm not as good as you are? It's not fair!"

Xanman, who'd allowed a semi-private mother-daughter moment, spoke up. "Veshna, the Samus Aran your mother was during the conflicts, isn't the only Samus there is. She's much more than the weapon that brought an end to the space pirate era. She's much happier not having to worry about who's going to attack and when." He rubbed his daughter's head gently. _Dear God, please let my daughter learn to love herself more_. He wiped the beginnings of a tear away.

The combined words of father and mother seemed to cheer her up, if only slightly and temporarily. "Thanks, dad, mom, I'm better now." She stood up and walked slowly towards the exam room to get her weekly checkup. She would get scanned to see how her internal chemistry functioned, and then get another injection to keep chemicals from causing problems.

Samus turned to her husband. She looked over her shoulder to make sure her daughter had left hearing range. "Xenman, I'm concerned. Every time she comes in, her injections get slightly stronger, and yet, the energy organ of the Metroid DNA keeps wanting to pump out more and more of that damned chemical." She grabbed the bar her daughter had struggled to get raised ten times, and lifted it effortlessly. "The energy-sucking chemicals that come out of the extra organ deteriorate her tissue...if this keeps up, it'll get too much to suppress!"

He hugged her like a supportive husband should. "Don't worry, Samus. We'll figure something out. She might be weak physically, but she's got your strong will." He only hoped his words rang true.

The doctor finished administering to Veshna her weekly injection. "There. You should be good for another seven days. Your enzyme ratios and balances are unusually normal this week, but I'm still not taking any chances. You might have an attack again; I'm going to prevent that." He had seldom seen such a strange series of imbalances from an organ a girl had been born with. Still, her mother hadn't actually expressed the full range of Metroid DNA, while the daughter actually had a whole organ, slightly below the stomach.

Veshna pulled her shirt sleeve over her arm again. "So, how's the Metroid organ doing?"

The doctor looked at the scan readings. "It seems to pump out chemicals when you get stressed or anxious, and you've been in relatively calm situations lately. The chemical is a standard emulsion that Metroids apparently use to allow them to absorb energy directly through the tissues of the victim. When the organ pumps it out into your bloodstream, it pulls energy from tissues it comes near, weakening your body. This injection, which suppresses the release of the chemical, keeps this problem from happening, but even it isn't perfect."

She stood up. "I hope there's a solution soon." She left the office. Her mother and father were waiting, and Samus draped a coat around the arms of her daughter.

"We'll find a way to take care of the situation, dear. Just remember that tomorrow is your class trip to system planet VS-012 for Geology class!" She saw the smile come to her daughter's previously sullen face, and it made her feel better. She felt bad that her only child had the unrealistic and unnecessary goal of proving herself worthy of some imaginary title. Xenman leaned next to his wife. He didn't understand why anyone would want to compete with his wife for an idea of war, much less his own daughter.

As the hover vehicle landed on the platform, Veshna thought of her mother's words. She felt moderately stupid for wanting to live up to an unreachable goal, especially since Samus had done most of her missions out of necessity to survive. At the same time, however, she wanted to see that look. She wanted that look she'd imagined so often, where her mother had a smile symbolic of her acceptance of her own individual strengths. The main thing she desired was to be more than "good enough." Greatness rested in her name; she desired it to be her own.

"Get some sleep, Veshna," Xenman pleaded, "you've got a busy day ahead of you." He headed off to catch the last of some programming on the hologram projector before heading out the next day for his scouting missions. Samus herself knew she would have to do some more bodyguard missions for the ambassadors heading to the Ventrox system. She would have to wear her power suit again, and that made her a bit nervous. On one hand, her power suit had become synonymous with greatness. On the other hand, it meant people looking at her as if to expect something. None of this concerned Veshna, who merely wanted to shower and get sleep. She'd hoped to become a bounty hunter one day, like her mother, taking missions for money and from the Galactic Federation; instead, the most she could hope for was a normal job.

"Veshna Aran," she spoke, and the voice receiver on the bathroom opened. She took off her clothing and stepped into the hot water. Gently she washed the sweat from her body. She had a trim body that had a bit of a stomach poking out, but she couldn't really be considered heavy. Also, she could be considered abnormally buxom for the senior class. This caught the jealousy of her classmates, who didn't realize that a chemical imbalance threatened to end her life if she didn't receive weekly medicine. All they saw was a skinny young girl with bigger breasts than normal, who lazed around too much to exercise, and thus was physically unfit. "I'm finished." The water ceased and hot air currents from vents dried her off.

She changed into her evening attire and lay flat, with her feet dangling partially off the bed. It only took her a few minutes of thought before she grew bored of thinking and fell asleep. She would doze another 8 hours and imagine herself in all manner of battles wearing her mother's Power Suit. She didn't stray more than an inch from her mother's height, and only her weight was lower, so she'd certainly fit well in it, but her frail body would not survive the motion required. Still, in her mind, she would find a way to make her mother proud of her.

The gentle pulsating of her alarm clock's pulse timer woke her up, and she quickly changed into her form-fitting body suit, ate breakfast, and headed out to get to class. The planet on which the day's rock excavation would take place wasn't more than 40 minutes' travel from the system home planet. The public transport station was about a hundred and twenty-five yards from her house, so she managed the walk in a short period of time. She climbed aboard the hoverbus, and it took her on the 7 minute ride to the public educational building. She would only be in public education for another 5 months, and then she would be off to a college to begin formal work education. She didn't look forward to it at all; if there existed anyway that she could have joined the service force for bounty hunting, she would. The bus arrived and everyone disembarked.

"Hey, Veshna!" a green-haired girl cheerfully popped up with, strolling up. "Are you going on the excavation today?" She had her hologram reader in her hand, and the data disc for all of her classes in the slot. The pages currently projected words from the physics files.

Veshna nodded. "Yeah, I know you think rocks are boring, Corza, but it's better than sitting around doing math all day." She pulled out her hologram reader and selected geology on the data disc.

Corza rolled her eyes. "You just love being out in the field. Me? I couldn't stand all the moving about. I gotta sit in one spot. You know? And hey, I like math."

"Hey," Veshna replied, "whatever flies your ship." They parted after Corza gave her information on a get-together everyone planned at twenty hours, standard twenty-four hour Base Earth time. "Yeah, I hope I can attend. I might just be doing homework." She spotted a look. "Hey, don't give me that 'oh-you're-such-a-bookworm' look. I like getting good grades all the time. Bye."

"Bye."

Veshna approached her group, gathered just outside the classroom. The instructor, a slightly overweight man with a rather abnormal point to the front of his hair, smiled his usual field-trip smile as the student with the second best grades arrived on time. "Good to see that nobody is absent today. Everyone, we're going to be studying geological features of a small section of a planet near the edge of this system. Since this is an interplanetary jump, we're going to have to be on our best behavior and make sure we don't clog up the jumpway, so that means when it comes time to jump, we jump as a group. Ok? It might seem like a long time to get there but remember; it beats going the old-fashioned way, which might take a whole afternoon." He checked his watch. "Ok. It's time to go to our jumpship. Everyone, head out. And don't make a ruckus. I don't want to have to write anyone up, but I will if it comes down to it." He walked towards the bay for the jumpships, and the students followed him in a predictable style. The collection of people loaded into a oval-shaped jumpship and waited for the guideways—giant circular tube generators floating in the sky—to form the correct energy tubes. "Now class, here's the deal. I'm going to give you two pieces of equipment when we get there. One, is a vibro-chisel. I've shown you how to make it vibrate to more easily punch through rock mass. I expect you to be mature enough not to mess around with it; it isn't a toy. The other, is a mineral data scanner. You've also seen how to use it. Again, don't use it as a toy. I expect four samples from each student, understand?" The class gave a collective answer.

The ship began its trip to the planet. Veshna sat and talked with a male classmate about the types of minerals most often seen in rocks on certain types of planets. The material didn't really strike her as the most interesting, but she certainly enjoyed going out into the field to work and study. She took the time to read up on some of the other types of minerals, and their applications once extracted. It impressed her how many uses there were for simple minerals from rocks. Soon enough, the ship arrived within the airspace of VS-012. The surface, while a beautiful array of colors from space, looked largely homogeneous from the ground level. The one-kilometer area they had been given to study looked mostly grayish-white with only the small dabble of color here and there. She took in the scenery, which was a stark contrast to the huge cities on homeplanet, right before getting her equipment from the instructor. Her chisel, scanner, and a small pack that wrapped around her shoulder and hung by her hips, and she set out apart from everyone else.

Her first find came about six hundred steps from her starting location. The scanner indicated a certain type of mineral only found on several hundred planets throughout this arm of the galaxy. She set the chisel to the moderate setting of vibration, and started pounding away gently at the hard rock, eventually breaking through to the dark crystal-laden rock below. It looked almost black and had organic crystals growing in it. Her scanner, upon close inspection, displayed the list of important minerals found, so she placed it in her pack. She hated using her chisel above the mild setting of vibration, but had to because of her lack of physical strength. She found another sample another thirty steps from there, chiseling away the common rock for the sample slightly below. This one sat a bit lower than the previous one. She had to walk almost another two hundred steps before she found her third sample. This one looked greenish and had dark formations in the middle of it. By this point, she walked another thirty steps then came across a ravine, about fourteen feet deep with edges worn away enough to allow someone light to climb down into. Braving the rock—which she did not entirely trust—she descended.

She saw the grayish rock ended around what looked like a dark brown quarter-sphere. It curved, and she could assume most of it sat beneath the surrounding rock. It looked vastly different from the rock, and her scanner could not tell what minerals were in it. She tapped it, and it gave back a very full sound. This told her it was not hollow, and that its composition contained no metal. The sound almost reminded her of hitting living tissue. She stood on the crest of the sphere and moved her scanner about in random directions hoping to pick up some unique samples. When she pointed it up and to the left of her current facing direction, she noticed something unusual; polished silvery metal sticking out of the rock. Almost immediately she recognized the problem; polished, refined metal did not occur naturally. When metallic aspects are discovered in rock, it is almost always as ore, which must be separated from rock and then refined. Polished metal had to have been _put_ there._ Huh, I wonder who was here and why their metal is buried in the rock._

She scaled the rock sticking out, and stood on what she assumed to be a safe platform, and slowly chiseled away at the rock. The metallic shaft, upon more of it being freed from encasing, turned out to be shaped like a handle instead. This further piqued her curiosity, and she struck more of the surrounding layers away. It took her almost fifteen whole minutes to remove the entire object, but when she did, it turned out to be a case. It was a solid metallic briefcase-shaped object, entirely made of some polished metal. _Urrgh! It's heavy!_ She climbed down carrying the case down, and stood on top of the crest of the sphere, slowly releasing the clamps holding the case shut. It creaked open on its own.

_Oh wow! I don't know what this is, but it looks incredible!_ She had never seen this before. Inside the case, in a holster, sat a most peculiar object. In the very center, a silvery dome-shaped medallion-like object, roughly three inches in diamater, with a line separating the two halves of the tiny dome. The line went in a circle, and clearly separated the upper half of the dome from the lower half, and the line itself was not actually merely drawn, but was a small crevice, in which very tiny organic crystals sat. Coiled around the center, was a purplish coil of what looked like living tentacles wrapped like extension cord. The coil looked to be roughly sixteen and two-thirds inches in diamater, and about six and a quarter inches thick. Three thin metal straps, extending from the center medallion in three different directions, connected to the center point on the other end, securing the tentacles in place. Also, three large straps not attached directly to the center medallion sat in between those metal straps. The parts of the clamps touching the top and bottom were shaped hexagonally, with an ordinary rectangle shaped in between piece. _This has to be some kind of technology used by some race long ago; I can't imagine this being anything else._ She wiped some dirt off of the shiny medallion in the center, and it shined brighter without the obscuring brown dust. However, the moment her hand grazed the lower half of the medallion, the organic crystals in the crevice separating the two halves began to glow.

_Huh, what's happening...AAHH!_ In the time it takes you to blink, the purple tentacles became animated after apparent millennia of inactivity. She almost managed to let out a scream mere moments before the tentacles uncoiled and extended, wrapping themselves completely around her entire body. She jostled back and forth as the tentacles ceased being separate limbs extending from the center medallion and became one goo-like cocoon. _What's happening to me? Argh! I can't breathe! HELP!_ She clenched her fists and banged herself against the rock wall in a futile manner. _It's merging with my tissue...becoming part of my skin and other stuff underneath!_ She felt strange mild-burning sensations everywhere as the covering integrated itself with every tissue in her body. The silver medallion appeared on her forehead as eye-like parts started to take shape out of the hardening goo. A pointy antenna-like crest projected from the top of where her forehead was, extending several inches high, curved slightly backwards. The purplish goo, as it hardened, began to change. The purple goo separated into slightly purplish-brown soft tissue with many small folds in it, and hard orange-colored plates on top.

The transformation nearly complete, the surfaces meant to be her eyes glowed red as she blacked out inside. Her body had taken on a dramatically new appearance. All of her former facial features were gone. The lower part of the antenna-like crest on the top of her forehead ended in a small hole in which the silver medallion sat, with a smaller hole where a tiny red dome, less than a centimeter across, slightly higher. On the top of her head, one on each side of the antenna-like crest, sat silvery orbs roughly the size of the medallion in the center of her forehead, except the hard plates around them were not solid all the way, so they could slide from the front of her forehead to the back of her head. Her mouth and nose did not exist anymore, replaced by two small silvery orbs, roughly one centimeter in diameter and one directly above the other, inside a small open space in the hard plates. On the left and right sides of the silver orbs where the mouth was, sat small vents. These vents projected about an inch or so out forward from the surface of the face. Two tubes ran from the location where her lower jaw jointed with the rest of the skull, and extended from there to a small bulb-like projection of hard plate on the upper chest, right below the base of the neck. Hard plates and soft tissue everywhere, two pointy projections on each forearm, pointing out and away from the body, rubbed past the rock as her new body moved back and forth. A plume of steam-like gas came out of the facial vents, lasting about a second.

Her eyes' glow ceased as she regained consciousness. "What's going on?" she thought out loud. "Wait, why does my voice sound all distorted?" Her voice sounded as though it were coming through speakers, and not through her mouth. Also, she couldn't feel her vocal cords moving. She looked at her reflection in the case's metal. _What...what's that? Is that...ME?...! It...it looks like some kind of armor! But it's part of my body! I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IS GOING ON!_ Her thought seemed to cause the silvery medallion in the center of her head to glow along its line. She suddenly became aware of the quarter sphere she stood on, opening in a spot large enough to allow passage—despite not knowing how she suddenly knew that. When she looked behind her—and it seemed weird to look, because she saw clearer and sharper than she had ever seen with her eyes before—it truly was as she mysteriously knew. She came to the conclusion that the thing she'd discovered had bonded with her and told her, but didn't know how that was possible. Was it going to hurt her? Was she going to turn into a monster? These were thoughts that plagued her mind.

As she passed through the opening, it closed behind her. Fear gave way to amazement, as the quarter sphere had been the smaller section of a larger object, which she currently moved about inside. She descended slowly to the floor, the mysterious thing covering her hovering slowly downward. It amazed her that it could do so. She saw just how much bigger it must be underneath all the rock. She believed more than a hundred people could live inside here, and it had holes in which she surmised beings had crawled in to sleep, and it had lots of spaces that looked like people used. _This looks less like a cave, and more like, call me crazy, a space ship!_ She moved around. As she came to the center of the room she currently sat in, a hole temporarily appeared. She descended once more to an even lower room. _Wow! This looks like the control room!_ She walked around to the center, and saw that there was a center projection from the floor, which had three empty slots shaped like the device she'd found in the briefcase. _Ok, this must be some kind of living armor! But what's that?_ She looked at the empty slot in the center. _Maybe they had a device in there for something. Oh, it doesn't matter right now._ She looked up and the medallion on her forehead glowed yet again, and in response, two large silvery hemispheres descended from the ceiling and hovered in a column of light. Bravely, she stepped into the column. The hemispheres immediately circled around her head.

All at once, images flashed into her mind, and she gained knowledge she hadn't before. She saw large ships—the one she stood in currently among them—shaped like short, fat missiles, flying through space and landing on the planet she stood on. Inside, were aliens she instantly learned were known as the "Advents." They each wore the armor she currently had been bonded with. The orbs taught her that all the Advents wore it, and it was known as the Standard Bio-booster Armor. It enabled them to live for billions of years while they genetically altered life on this current planet to create creatures they could mind-control with their psionic abilities called Zoanoids, and use in battle. After many millions of years of creating these creatures, one of their lesser creatures they created to serve as a lieutenant to the zoanoids, this being called a Zoa_lord_, had obtained one of their Bio-booster armors and bonded with it, and it made him much more powerful than an Advent attached to it, and it also freed him from their mental control, causing them to destroy him in a very intense battle and flee, leaving some of their ships behind. They had a term they used for any time someone other than an Advent utilized the armor, because it would make that being much more powerful: the term was "out of control," or, in their language, "Guyver." The Guyver unit, as it came to be known, consisted of a parasite, and the silvery medallion, which was the center piece of the unit, called the "control medal." It was this small medallion on her forehead, which put the parasite completely under the will of the host. It changed her entire body physiology to make her more powerful.

Not only that, but the control medal directs the parasite to create weaponry from organic tissue. The control medal's organic crystals drew energy from a sub-space dimension known as the "boost dimension." This fueled all the energy requirements of the Guyver as well as the weapons. The head beam—the small red orb above the control medal—fired a compact infrared laser using excess body heat and boost dimension energy. The pointy projections on the forearms could extend outward into blades that vibrated at ultra-sonic frequencies to cut through the hardest objects as if they were paper. There was an orb on the abdomen, this drew energy from the boost dimension and altered gravity to allow the host to fly in their Guyver form, as well as to fire gravity distortions from the fingers known as the "pressure cannon." The physical strength greatly increased, over a hundred times, gave the host the capacity to punch through meters of concrete with a single blow, or press many tons over their head. The Guyver had incredible durability and could regenerate from the smallest piece of tissue still present on the unit. The vents on the face expelled poisons, toxins, and other products of metabolism that don't belong in the body. The small orbs on the face replaced the mouth, vibrating to serve as the voice of the host, and could also emit sonic waves that could fragment objects on a molecular scale, the "sonic buster." The orbs on the sides of the top of her head could sense magnetic fields and allowed the host to sense any part of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves all the way up to gamma radiation. However, the supreme weapon built in, was the "mega smasher." Below the hard chest plates, were two transparent, gelatin-like lenses that had taken the place of the fatty tissue in the chest. The hard chest plates would open up and the lenses would focus energy from the boost dimension into photons, which shot out from these lenses as a one hundred megawatt particle beam cannon, vaporizing anything in their path.

All of this, she learned instantly from the orb in the Advent ship. With a mental command, the armor separated itself from her tissues, revealing her exactly as she had been before the bonding, even her clothes exactly on her body where they were. It surrounded itself in light, and vanished into the boost dimension she'd just learned about. With a mental command, and a shout of "Guyver!" a sphere of light surrounded her, and the unit once more encased itself onto her, changing her tissues once again. _This is great! I've got an armor that can't be blown off by an attack, and if the knowledge this ship just taught me is true, I won't have to worry about my strength anymore!_ She didn't know how true her words were. She ascended above and out of the ship. Oh, how she couldn't wait to tell her mother this.

--

Author's note: A lot of this might seem like mumbo-jumbo if you aren't familiar with the anime Guyver. If you don't know what Guyver is, I've got a link to where you should go on my profile page. If you are only familiar with the crappy American live action movies, believe me, I'm not crossing it over with _that_ interpretation of Guyver.


	2. Chapter 2

Metroid Next: The Torch  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER TWO

Veshna climbed from the deepest chamber, in which the orbs that had, in an instant's time, taught her everything about the Advents, and the Guyver unit she currently bonded with, to the higher level. She looked at the tissues that made up the walls. _Kind of hard to imagine that these "Advents," actually used living ships. Let's see, exit, open!_ Her thought caused her control medal to glow, and when it did, a sphincter opened up, revealing the air above. Her gravity control orb on her abdomen enabled her to fly upwards and out of the living ship, and the hole closed behind her. She examined the rock walls around her, and saw her pack sitting on a rock outcropping. Oh, that's right. The assignment. I still need to get one more sample. She picked up her mineral scanner. It beeped, indicating that amongst the common rock, there sat one unique sample, different from what she'd gotten earlier. She lifted her chisel. Pounding the chisel against the rock wall showed drastically different results. The first bang of her chisel nearly buried it in the solid rock, where previously, she considered it luck to get more than a bit of dust with small chunks on a moderate setting. _What? Oh! That's right! My physical strength is enhanced by this Guyver!_ She could keep the vibration on mild, and still, the rock broke away much easier than before.

She disconnected from the Guyver with a mental command, sending the unit into the boost dimension where it would await her to summon it again. She figured it best not to walk around wearing an alien bio-armor during a class field trip. Calmly, she leaped from the surface of the ship to the higher rock cropping, a jump of almost a foot and a half. Catching her balance quickly, she marveled at this feat—for previously, it would've been impossible. _Huh?_ She seemed amazed, yet confused, until she remembered more data the ship had taught her. _Of course! I remember! It completely alters your internal anatomy to remove flaws and problems, and to make you as fit as possible!_ She clenched a fist and smiled, pleased. With one more leap, her legs took her back to the surface level above the ravine.

The rest of the class still searched for their samples. She had been lucky enough to find the closest samples. Calm, yet only by suppressing her ecstatic nature, she approached her teacher to turn in her equipment and samples. He took the chisel and scanner, then appraised the rock samples. "Good job, Veshna! You've found four of the major types of rocks that are found on planets of this variety. I hope some of the others have samples this good." He put her name on the bag she carried them in and put it inside the ship's cargo area. "You can sit down and relax now, Veshna. You've completed your assignment."

Samus, kept her suit's visual sensors on the general vicinity of the crowd. She'd been assigned by the Galactic Federation to protect one of the major ambassadors to another system as he gave a speech to a huge crowd. They had specifically asked her to wear her power suit—a fact that made her uneasy about what type of attack he might undergo. A standard assassin would not be sufficient of a threat to warrant such dramatic measures. Her visual visual sensors kept each person of the crowd in view. Anything suspicious would not sneak by her.

_Dammit. I think...oh shit..._ Her thought process came to a screeching halt when she saw the panicked expression on one of the audience member's faces. Obviously no one else had seen it. Ignoring the other ambient sounds, she heard the distinct sound of creeping footsteps. Someone behind the podium didn't belong there. _Calm down, Samus, you've been in worse. Just don't let them know you know they're there._ She got her fingers on her plasma cannon's trigger mechanism. Battle senses kicked in a moment later.

A figure leaped from the floor to the podium, headed for the area immediately posterior to the ambassador. From ten feet away, she didn't have time to approach, so she turned and, aiming quickly but carefully, fired a single ball of energy. It soared across and instantly melted away the head of the perpetrator. The lizard-like corpse, approximately six feet tall, landed near the ambassador, and everyone shrieked and began panicking. People began leaping to their feet from the chairs and running, and chaos ensued as Samus pushed her target down and stood above him for protection. "Don't worry, sir, you'll be safe."_ Oh hell, _she thought, looking quickly at the corpse. _Lizard-like, bipedal, about six feet tall..._ She started remembering Zebes. _These are servants of the Space Pirates. Shit._

The ambassador looked up at the armored woman scanning around for more targets. "What's going on? What in the hell is that?" He tugged at his collar, finding it hard to breathe. He didn't dare get up, though. Not when he could have someone wearing armor protecting him. He figured it was a space pirate, because they were the only ones in the area who'd dare attack with a legendary figure like Samus in her power suit standing not eleven feet away from a potential target.

"It's a space pirate," Samus replied, "and here I thought these bastards had left for good." She looked around for Ridley. These things didn't stray far from their master. She'd fought scores of these walking lizards that shoot energy beams from their eyes on Zebes. They fell like flies individually, but their primary advantage lay in numbers. She got on her radio. "Federation headquarters? This is Samus."

A crackly voice came over. "What the hell just happened? We saw an attack."

She heard the panicky voice. "Don't get upset, I've got it under control. It was an attempt by a space pirate, and...duck!" The ambassador lay down flat as she squeezed off another shot, vaporizing the center mass of another of the lizard-like pirates. "Sorry, another one just tried to attack." She turned her gaze skyward. "Ridley! I know you're here, you fucker, I don't know _how_, but I know your methods. Show yourself."

No answer. She turned to her target. "Sir, let's go back to the ship. I'll make sure you make it back to Federation headquarters safely. If Space Pirates are back in this quadrant, it'll be a shitstorm. We've got to get you into protective custody." He nodded and followed her.

They got onto her ship, and took off, as the Federation ship that had transported the ambassador exploded. She took off at near-light speed for the Federation homeplanet. Her communications rang. "Xanman? What's going on?"

She heard a plasma rifle bolt ring out. "Fucking space pirates! They're back. I'm concerned about Veshna. What if the planet she's on gets attacked? I'm headed home now, but she's still on the field trip!" He got aboard his group's craft. Another pirate shot his head out of a small foxhole, and got a plasma bolt through the head. "Formo! Cover our exit! Samus, I'll see you at home. I think you're going to be called into service again." He fired several more times, hitting the mark.

Back on the field trip, Veshna sat on a rock near the ship, looking up at the mid-afternoon sky. This planet had two suns, so the night period never lasted more than two hours. It also made for some beautiful colors that radiated about. Objects that looked like streaking comets moved by. "Wow," she thought out loud. "It must be comets moving by!"

The teacher looked up. "It looks like they're headed for the planet, though! Everyone! Take cover!" He braced for impact. Sure enough, the ground shook. Except, there wasn't one impact; there were several. One such impact, landed nearly a quarter mile from where they stood. It looked to be some kind of pod. From it, nearly twenty bipedal lizard-like pirates emerged in body suits, and charged the group. "What the...?"

Veshna jumped up from the rock, her heart pounding. _I didn't expect to have to do this so soon._ "GUYVER!" A spherical field formed around her, and through a wormhole connecting to the boost dimension, the armor appeared, biologically connecting to her body once more. The field disappeared and a plume of smoke-like steam came from the facial vents. As a pirate snatched up a fellow student in its claws, she dashed up to it and, extending the pointy projections from her arms into meter-long blades, she decapitated it cleanly. One approached another student to kill him and she fired a head beam. The compact infrared laser pierced the skull of the pirate, and he fell like timber. From her sonic orbs, she fired a deadly sonic wave forward, the arc of which caused five pirates to disintegrate into microscopic particles. She marveled at how easy she mowed through the foot soldiers.

However, from behind them, after killing them, emerged a ten foot tall Torizo. The massive, genetically reprogrammed beast, dwarfed her by a significant amount, and attempted to grasp for her head. Out of sheer reflex, she reached out and clasped her left hand around its giant right claw. His other hand found itself grasped by her other hand when it went for her throat. Now, grappling in a test of strength, it pushed as hard as it could. Oddly enough, this creature, strong enough to punch through metal walls and toss ships around, could not equal the Guyver's strength, as she pushed him backwards. With a violent shove, he nearly fell over backwards. She cupped her hands together ala hadouken style, and a gravity distortion, formed by the gravity controller in her waist area, channeled through her fingers, into a dark ball of warped space. The pressure cannon shot forth at tremendous speed, blasting a clean hole straight through the center mass of the Torizo. A horrid screech of agony came from it as it spewed acid—which she nimbly dodged—and went for its head. A clean slice, and it was headless. The problem with Torizo, however, is that they had to be completely annihilated to be destroyed. Its headless body, with hole in the torso, spewed acid at her. She dodged most of it, but her left hand melted away, being hit. She yelled in pain and then disintegrated the Torizo completely with a sonic buster.

_Hell_, she thought. _That was painful. I can only imagine how much my mother had to go through._ She looked at her left wrist, where the Guyver already had regnerated her hand. _How did she fight these things without regeneration?_ She walked over to the group of students. They regarded her with strange accord. She put her hands on her hips. "Come on, now. Don't look at me like that." She'd just saved their lives, and they'd show fear and concern in her presence? Such hypocrites.

"Uh, Veshna? Is that you?"

"Yeah," she replied, her voice sounding very distorted. "This is the Guyver. I found it in a ravine nearby."

The teacher cleared his throat. "I'd probably normally admonish you for physical contact with strange, unknown alien technology, but in this case, I'm damn glad you did." He scratched his head. "Although, you can't exactly walk the halls wearing that. There's a Federation policy regarding wearing space armor with weaponry built in."

She shook her head. "Oh, don't worry, I can unequip..." A laser burned her right arm slightly, and the wound quickly regenerated. She turned to her right. Almost a hundred of the pirates and Torizo charged like a battalion over the hill. "Everyone! Get behind me!" She pulled her armored chest plates open, revealing two clear, gelatin-like lenses shaped like her breasts. _I need a wide enough arc to kill them all_, she thought, and her control medal glowed. The breast-like gelatin began to glow as light gathered brightly in the center of each lens.

The rumbling increased as the group got closer. "Veshna? If you're going to do something, do it now!"

_MEGASMASHER, FIRE!_ The light's glow reached its brightest immediately prior to a wide particle beam shot forth, catching every one of the pirates and Torizo in it, melting them like ice cubes in the sun in less than a second. The scenery looked burnt in every part touched by the huge beam. She counted her luck that there'd been a full second's warning, because it took nearly a complete second to charge the beam. The chest plates covered the gelatinous tissue once more. She uneqipped the armor, revealing herself as she was, her clothes and form restored as it was prior to her summoning the unit.

"I never knew those big boobs of yours could fire energy blasts," one of the male students joked.

She approached him. "You want to see what the beam is like?" He got afraid and cowered. "See, I knew it."

"Now, everyone, let's get back to the class before anything else happens." He lead them back to the jumpship. "Oh, no. In all the commotion, the ship got damaged." He looked at the concerned students. "Now, don't worry. I'll signal a ship. We might have to wait here quite a bit, but it should be fine." He got on his hologram communicator. Veshna started walking away. "Where are you going?"

She waved to them. "Don't worry about signaling a ship. I found one near the Guyver." One of her friends took off after her. _I've already saved all of my classmates in my first half-hour as the Guyver, and I've used every single weapon the Guyver has. I wonder how long it was before my mother used all of her suit's weaponry? _Her thought process got rather abruptly interrupted when her friend snuck up behind her, and cupped her hands around Veshna's considerable bosom. "Moshana, what are you doing?"

She squeezed her friend's chest, then let go. "I eat the same rich diet you do, yet you've got these while I'm stuck with what look like mosquito bites." She jokingly jabbed her friend's shoulder. "Just kidding. I just find it amazing." She walked lockstep with Veshna.

Veshna rolled her eyes. "My breasts are a result of my unusual chemistry. Remember how I told you I have a Metroid organ, and its emulsions fuck up my chemistry? It caused me to hit puberty a year early, and my estrogen production to be excessive. I might have better curves than most of the senior class, but if I don't get injections once a week, I could easily die." She looked over. "So, you can have my breasts if you'll take the weekly injections."

Moshana shook her head. "I'll pass on the injections, thanks. So, what was that Guyver thing you were wearing?" She wanted one. She didn't think there would be another one, but she wanted one.

"I wasn't wearing it," she corrected, "it _was_ me. I _was _it. You don't wear a Guyver unit, you are the Guyver. And it's a bioboosting living armor system." She saw her friend cleaning her ears out. "Oh, uh, just consider it a living human body instant redesigning system that makes you as physically enhanced as you can get. Plus, when you're wearing it, you're even more powerful than that."

"But," her friend inquired, "it can regenerate? Like your hand? How much can it regenerate?"

_What, is this twenty questions?_ She kept her gaze forward. "There could be only one living cell left on the control medal—the silvery thing on my head when I'm the Guyver—and it'd be able to regenerate my whole body." She knew her friend would want to know why, so she preempted another question. "It does that because the control medal backs up your memories, downloads your consciousness, and knows how your body is arranged." Her friend gave a nod, indicating she didn't need to know any more about the Guyver.

"Wait, how do you know all this?"

"Remember how I said back there I found a ship? The ship taught me."

They approached the ravine. Veshna stood about twenty feet from the edge. "Moshana, stand back. If you're too close, the blast field of the Guyver will annihilate you." She gave a mental command. "Guyver!" The field came up and when it dissipated, she was the Guyver once more. Her friend approached. _Ship, I need you to open for me and a passenger_! The hole appeared in the surface of the ship. They both descended into the craft, the other girl marveling at the scenery.

"This is amazing! It looks so weird!"

"This ship is a living organism, you know. It's not made from metal."

They dropped into the lower chamber once more, and the orbs emerged in the column of light again. She stepped into the light, with the mental intention to pilot the craft. Instead of the burst of memories that came into her mind last time, this time, she saw the outside rock as though the entire surface of the outer shell served as visual surfaces. Moving the ship as though she were the ship, she thought of what direction to go and it obeyed. The rock grumbled and gave way as millennia of stone broke under the force of the ship traveling upwards. Not a second later, the ship hovered and landed near the group of students. A hole in the side opened like a eye's iris opening. Nervously, the students filed into the large ship.

The teacher received a call from his communicator as the wall closed behind the students. "Yes, I know. Yes, the pirates did attack. No, no fatalities. One of our students, she found an alien armor called 'Guyver,' and she used it to defeat the pirates. No, no, she's fine too. She'll get in communication with you guys on her own time. Right now, she's piloting a ship she found to take us back to homeplanet." He hung up.

As Samus escorted the ambassador through the halls of the Federation headquarters, she shook his hand and headed out the door when a man approached her. "Mrs. Aran? There was an incident on the planet your daughter had her field trip on."

"WHAT?...! Is she ok?"

He tried to calm her down. "Don't worry, she's not hurt at all. In fact, you might find this hard to imagine, but she's...actually the one that fought them off." He found himself in the grasp of her power suit, held a foot off the ground effortlessly. "Ma'am, I swear! I'm not allowed to lie."

"How the hell did she fight them off?"

"She found alien technology!" Samus dropped him, and took off running, fastening her helmet to her suit before more than a few feet. Her daughter had found alien technology? Used it to fight off an attack in her weakened state? These were thoughts that plagued the bounty hunter. _If she went into hard physical combat with space pirates, the strenuous level of activity combined with the fear she must have had, the Metroid organ must have pumped her full of that chemical!_ When it came to her life, Samus had no fear. What frightened her more than anything, was the prospect of her daughter having a severe attack again. She bounded ten feet into the top of her parked ship, dropping into the cabin and piloting it at rocket speed towards the landing pad where ships landed; surely her daughter would be there. Ships had to land there.

The brownish-colored, missile shaped ship landed and the door opened, and the class filed out. Veshna emerged, and saw a familiar sight. "Mom! You're back!" Her response, she did not anticipate. Samus brandished a charging plasma cannon at her Guyver-equipped daughter. She had a full battle stance.

"Who the hell are you, and where's my daughter?" She had been experienced shape-shifters and imitators before. Plus, her daughter's voice seemed distorted, lending credence to this theory. "Show her or you get one in the head."

Veshna waved her hands defensively. "Mom, it's me! I swear!"

"Prove it!" She fired the shot at her daughter's feet, the distraction allowing her to flip-leap and land immediately in front of the Guyver. She put away her plasma cannon and went for the throat. Veshna, defensively, grasped her mother's power suited hands, and held her back. Samus had Chozo DNA making her already stronger than almost any human. Plus, her power suit gave her the strength to lift at least ten tons. However, whoever this being was, it held her strength back as though it were nothing at all. She sent her mother onto her back with a shove.

"Mother, please, I'll show you." With a mental command, her Guyver retreated back into the boost dimension. Samus took her helmet off and set it down on the ground. She approached and hugged her daughter. _Oh god, did I actually just fight my own daughter? With plasma? Oh shit. I hope I didn't do any harm._

"Oh, Veshna, I'm so sorry." She tightened the embrace, before realizing she might be doing harm. "Are you ok? Was that the thing you fought the pirates with!" _What kind of power was that? It had greater physical strength than my power suit!_ She didn't imagine her daughter with such power. More accurately, she couldn't imagine her daughter so powerful, especially since a day prior she struggled to lift 45 pounds. Now, she held back the strength to lift ten tons with no effort. "Let's get you to the doctor. I want to see your emulsion levels."

Veshna cupped her hand over her mouth. _Oh, fuck! I forgot about that! Stress activates my Metroid organ! Damn_! "Yeah, I think that'll be a good idea." She filed off with her daughter.

The doctor looked over at the biochemistry scans of Veshna's anatomy. He grasped his chin as he held up the sheet of paper. "Veshna, I do believe I've seen it all at this point." He cleared his throat. "I don't know what the 'Guyver' you claim to have, is, but I can see what it's done." He looked at her. "Before you start to panic, just realize, it isn't bad. In fact, I wish I had one, by these results. Comparing yesterday to today, it's as if you are a healthy twin sister to the girl I gave an injection to yesterday."

Veshna could have sprung from her seat. "So, what's the big change?"

He widened his eyes and took a deep exhale in response. "Geez. Do you want it in any particular _order_? There's quite a bit here." He folded his arms.

"Just tell me straight, doctor."

He raised and lowered his eyebrows. "Ok. First of all, I've done a scan of your muscle tissue. You previously had quite a bit of atrophy—muscles wearing down—from your condition. You had quite a bit of neuromuscular degeneration. That's the main reason your physical strength had always been so low. Your calcium levels, well, I haven't seen them so depleted outside of osteoporosis patients. That's why you got injured so often as a child. Plus, all of this came from the same source: your Metroid organ, whose emulsions would almost literally suck the life out of the tissues it encountered. You had some nasty attacks when you were younger. Now, all of this is taken care of, as if you waved a magic wand and took away the health problems."

She rapidly interrupted him with, "Oh my God! You're certain?"

He nodded and continued. "Your Metroid organ has been altered considerably in the way it functions. It still produces the same type of emulsion, but now, it has been altered to produce energy-modifying chemicals that don't harm the tissues present in your body, meaning all of your tissue degeneration issues are gone. Second of all, if that wasn't amazing enough, your muscles have been restored to what they would be if they hadn't been atrophying for years. Your bone calcium levels are as healthy as they could be for your age. It's a complete one-eighty overnight. Health advances this radical don't occur, as far as I have seen. There was one concern, though. These scar-like marks on your back."

She looked at the picture he'd taken of the skin on her back. It had the appearance of a scar from where a cancer had been removed from the surface. They were arranged in a specific area on the upper back. "Oh, don't worry about those," she assured him. "They are the tissue that summons the Guyver unit from the sub-space dimension it resides in."

"I was about to say they weren't cancerous in nature, but it's good that you know more about this than I do." He smiled and put her charts in a folder, handing them to her. "I hate to think I'm losing a patient, but the fact that you've finally gotten as healthy as you've always wanted, is great news to me." They exited the examination room, where Samus sat waiting. She immediately shot up and approached the doctor.

"So, what's the deal?"

"She's got some scar tissue on her back, which is apparently used to call the 'Guyver' she is bonded with, whatever it is, but remarkably, Mrs. Aran, it has completely corrected every health problem she's had thus far."

Samus did a double take. "Really? That's amazing!" She regarded her daughter. "Honey, this is what we've dreamed of! I can't believe your luck. I mean, you apparently know everything about this Guyver unit, and it's fixed your body, so it can't be bad." As they left the office, she pulled her daughter aside. "Look, Veshna, I know what you're thinking before you even have to say a word. Don't go fighting the space pirates without me."

Veshna took her opportunity to defend herself. "What, do you think I'm not able to defend myself?"

Samus folded her arms. "Veshna, you might be able to defend yourself, but if the Space Pirates are returning, we're looking at what could be an all-out war. You took on what, a hundred of the easy-as-hell-to-kill types? I've fought vicious monsters like Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain. I don't know how this Guyver works, and hell, I'm certain you could be as skilled as I am or even more so than me, but only with training. You're going into battle? You're going with me, and I'm going to train you on how to be effective in combat."

"Mom, I wasn't planning on running off half-cocked. I just don't want to be on a leash."

Samus leaned in for effect. "Veshna, you probably killed so quickly because you were able to dismiss the enemy as 'just a bunch of lizards.' Right?" Her daughter's nervous response gave her the answer. "I thought so. Imagine fighting someone who looks as human as you do, but you _know_ you're going to have to kill them right in front of you. Could you do that? Could you take a life without batting an eye? I'm not worried about defending yourself or those around you. You've apparently already done it—I wish I was there to see your performance. I'm worried about how quickly you could kill." She noticed her daughter's expression. "You seem nervous. This is what you asked for, right? A chance to do battle? Prove yourself to me? Don't start something you can't finish."

Veshna tugged at her collar. She didn't like this Samus; this must be the mother her father talked about. She felt almost as though she were talking to a recruitment officer, or a veteran telling horror stories about wars that left them mentally scarred. "Tell me something, then, mother. If dad was infected with some mind-controlling parasite, and he attacked me, what would you do?"

Samus didn't like the question, but she didn't even hesitate. "If he went for you, he'd be dead before he hit the ground." She backed off; she could sense her daughter wanting mentally to distance herself. "Honey, please," she hugged her daughter. "I love you and your father more than anything else in life. But you are my one true treasure in this world. I'd die in a moment to save you. I just wanted you to be happy. If you want to go into battle, please, Veshna, just let me get you in the proper level of training so you don't have to worry."

Veshna calmed down, and smiled, returning the hug. This was the mother she grew up seeing. "I want to be on the same level as you, that's all." They headed home, only vaguely aware of the situation.


	3. Chapter 3

Metroid Next: The Torch  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER THREE

Veshna brushed aside a straight punch from her mother. A week had passed since the day she found the Guyver unit and the living spacecraft, and since the Space Pirates hadn't shown themselves since being brave enough to unleash their anger at the ambassador, Samus utilized every evening to undergo battle training to prepare her daughter. The girl's left hand deflection freed up her right hand to attempt a palm strike at her mother's exposed face. However, the battle-hardened mother ducked backwards and in the middle of the pullback, drove her knee up into her daughter's abdomen. The teenager reeled forward from the impact, which allowed her mother to headbutt her backwards. Lifting her right foot upwards for a roundhouse kick, she swung left. Veshna ducked beneath it, and when her mother's back was exposed, sprung backwards onto her hands, wrapping her legs around the bounty hunter's head, pulling her down. As the mother came down directly above her daughter, her daughter's left lower leg tucked beneath her chin, pressing upwards on her neck. With the other leg pulling down, Veshna reached up and grabbed her mother's head in her hands and pulled down against her foot pushing up.

Samus's face began to turn red in the painful gogoplata submission hold. "I...surrender..." Samus weakly mouthed. Her daughter released her and took several deep breaths. The mother gasped for breath, as most of supply was cut off by the strategic submission. "Veshna, you certainly took command of the fight with that hold. I wasn't truly expecting you to catch onto that so quickly. However, most of the time you'll be fighting creatures where you can't cut off their oxygen supply by squeezing the neck."

"I...know," Veshna gasped, "but this...isn't 'then' yet." She wiped her brow as she forced her way up. She'd finally managed to get her mother to admit defeat in sparring. All the previous training sessions, her mother had wiped the floor with her. She attributed this to the fighting styles utilized.

"Veshna, you beat me because you finally paid attention," the mother advised. "I know you might have ideas of this or that as to why you won today, but the reason you kept losing is because you tried to emulate or simply utilize a variation of my style, without adapting your own. Once you started utilizing your own style of punches and kicks, and implementing those submission holds, you got where you needed to be." Samus didn't have the guts to tell her daughter she would've lost had she not been her daughter. Certainly, the gogoplata her daughter used would've cut off her oxygen supply, but had the limitations of love not been in place, Samus could've used her hands—which were free the whole time—to deliver one of several fatal punches to certain points. She simply smiled and ruffled her daughter's hair.

"Okay, you two, I think it's time to stop fighting for the day and get ready for dinner," Xanman reminded, entering the chamber. "I decided to cook today."

"Good! This is much better than the crap that computer decides to make," Veshna admitted.

Samus rolled her eyes. "You're spoiled on the food we make. I remember being in the far depths of space and having to eat the rations the ship's computer put together out of organic edible material. It tasted worse than you have ever eaten."

Veshna gagged. "Yuck. I'm glad I don't have to eat in my Guyver form."

"That reminds me," Samus interjected. "I want to do a field simulation on one of the other planets, to see exactly what the physical specifications of your 'Guyver' are. I know the strength already. My suit has a strength rating of ten tons, which you easily fended off. You've told me of the weapons you have, but I want to see you in action." She looked at her daughter's enthusiasm. "Now, don't get too jumpy; we're just going to be taking on some self-duplicating droids, not very powerful."

"I think tomorrow after school will be fine," Xanman added. "The caves on Xec-Vor 1 are free most of the time, anyway." He suggested the caves because they'd provide the best possible training short of actual combat for his daughter. Being galactic military in a time when Space Pirates might be returning meant he'd be called into action. It meant he'd be away from his daughter for a while, or not, depending on whether or not her mother and her went into combat zones. During battles, any who were officially classified as bounty hunters had no restrictions on actual combat, provided they didn't betray. "Samus, are you going to be taking her to get her 'bounty hunter' certification?"

Veshna beamed, while Samus looked back and forth. "We'll have to, if she's going to be able to fight alongside me." The bounty hunter didn't want her daughter's expectations to be too high, though. The 'new' had to wear off before too long, and she knew at that point it would be pointless to try and get her daughter to continue, because that's how teenagers worked."

The family sat down and had a nice meal, free of talk of combat and more discussion on such issues as schoolwork, travel, and the latest happenings in the system. In her experience, the middle-aged bounty hunter enjoyed these quiet, ordinary moments far more than being thrust into the heart of combat. Only her husband had seen more death than her, and it contributed severely to her dislike of armed warfare. She took a bite of the slab of meat in front of her, marveling at the tenderness. "Xanman, I never thought I'd meet a man with such cooking talent. I'm amazed half the time if men know how to order food."

Xanman gave a hearty laugh. "I've been stationed on dozens of different planets," he explained, "I do believe that I've learned at least a few dozen styles of food. You see, we men are more than just muscles and missiles." He took a bite. "And Veshna, if you want to know of a good man to marry, don't get impressed by the ones who try to be macho."

Veshna almost flew back in her seat. "Dad, I'm not even dating right now, and you're talking about marriage? Don't you think you're jumping the gun?"

He wiped his face. "I'm just saying. You don't want to get reeled in by that."

She pointed her fork at him. "So, then, how did a big military man like yourself impress my mother?"

Samus set down her glass. "I got drawn in by how human he was. All the other guys in his platoon that I had the misfortune of working with—sorry, honey—were either so distant as to be not even there, or else were bloodthirsty lunatics, the kind who lived for the slaughter. Xanman here, was the one who asked me if I thought the plant life on the planet was going to heal properly."

The daughter took a double take. "Plant life?"

"Yup," the mother continued. "I was convinced none of them cared about anything other than the mission, but he knew the mission would succeed, and as such, turned his notice to the damage the battles were doing to the surface of that planet. It intrigued me enough to keep talking to him after that battle."

"Aw, dad, you're a really sensitive guy."

Xanman rolled his eyes. "You know, not many soldiers actually care about the battleground after it stops being a battleground. They'll bomb it down to a lifeless dirt flatland. They'll leave an entire population with sterile ground. It pisses me off that few of them care. It's the few that do care that got the rules of warfare changed enough to protect the place after the war."

Samus shook her head. "You'd be amazed. A lot of people would rather blow up a planet to get at a few enemies than risk sending anyone in. It makes me sad to think that technology of war is focusing on amounts of devastation rather than practical use." She looked her daughter in the eye. "The Chozo designed my power suit to defend what was important to me, not just to annihilate anything in my path like some of the bombs the Galactic Federation makes."

Veshna finished her plate and set it in the dish washer. "I'm going to get to sleep now. See you after school!"

"Goodnight, dear!" Samus waited until her daughter was out of listening range. "Xanman, what is your opinion of this? I mean, I'm eternally grateful to that alien technology that provided our daughter with the Guyver, because all of her medical problems are gone. It's a godsend. Still, I can't help but be worried. Armored, she's more powerful than I am."

"Samus, what's to be worried about? You're going to be training her, and with you as skilled as you are, she'll be fine!"

"I get the feeling she'll be fine, Xanman, but it just feels weird. A little over a week ago we were concerned she'd never live to be old enough to drink alcohol, and now she's going to be fighting Space Pirates. I just didn't think she'd have to do this."

Xanman laughed a bit. "I see what you mean. You're getting concerned because our baby is going to be fighting alongside you against your old enemies. Aren't you glad things are a little different this time around?"

"Xanman, how can you be so nonchalant?" She seriously began to doubt his grasp on the situation.

He looked her in the eye. "Samus, I'll tell you why I'm so nonchalant. Imagine she's still in her old condition, and the Space Pirates attack. Could you imagine if they invaded our home planet under those conditions?"

Samus slunk back in her chair. He brought up a far better point than she could have imagined. Truly, she didn't want to fathom the consequences of a defenseless Veshna against the evils of Mother Brain's henchmen. She smiled as she thought of how much better off her daughter was. "You're right, Xanman. I'm sorry I lashed."

He raised an eyebrow. "That was lashing out? Man, you have gotten tame."

Veshna stepped into the shower, disrobing and throwing her clothes to the floor. As she washed her body, she looked to her limbs. No longer did her arms and legs look like sticks covered in flesh. Now, her arms had real muscle tone and her torso no longer displayed her ribs. She felt less impact on her bones when she walked, indicating her calcium density had increased. Her reflection in the mirror showed the reason for all of this, in the form of the scar-like tissue on the upper back. This tissue had the primary function of sending a signal through the barrier of dimensions to summon the armor. Thinking of that, she knew the armor had rewritten the genetic code of the Metroid organ to work in conjunction with her body instead of against it, but had it done anything else? Metroids drew energy and could store it within. Perhaps her organ would do the same?

_Hmm, just for the hell of it_. She clenched the hot shower head in her hand. Strangely enough, she felt the heat leave the shower head and travel through her hand, and through her entire body to the center, where she knew the organ sat. Pulling her hand away from the now-frozen shower head, the hot water melted through the formed ice and began flowing again. She felt more energized than usual thanks to this display, but looked at her hand with curiosity. _So, I can drain energy like a Metroid? Weird_. She went back to washing herself. The shower head had frozen because of the energy being drawn directly out of it; had this been why her body decayed so much? Because the organ would literally turn the tissues to dust? She shook her head. _Thank God I found that Guyver_, she thought.

She dried off and got dressed for bed. The next morning she got her materials ready for school. She got to the campus approximately twenty minutes early, so she too the opportunity to sit at a bench and catch up on reading for the next assignment. She realized that her upcoming work would be worth more points than the earlier, and as such, she required more attention to it. The bench shifted, however, she didn't break focus from the book. "You seem abnormally caught up in reading," Corza egged. "I usually don't see you reading anything academic."

"I suppose your fashion isn't the only trend to get broken," Veshna bit back. She glanced up and smiled, indicating her sarcasm served humor. "Come on. Cut me some slack. Everyone needs to study for the class material once in a while." She went back to reading.

Corza leaned her head on her friend's shoulder. "So, what do you think of the attack on the planet systems?" She pretended to fall asleep. "Are we screwed?"

"Don't fall asleep on my shoulder, Corza," Veshna admonished. "No, I put faith in our military system."

The green-haired girl lifted her head. "You're the daughter of a famous bounty hunter; I thought you'd put more faith in the bounty hunters."

"Corza, please. Most bounty hunters work a few times a year for the big hits. My mother used to work at least thirty times a year regardless of the pay, because she was devoted. Plus, she was the only bounty hunter in history to pull in six times the success rating of the cybernetic hunters. She's in a different category than the military."

"Your point is?" Corza didn't hear an answer in that long response.

"I don't put faith in bounty hunters that don't take at least half the missions my mother used to, so that means I don't put faith in almost any of them. That answer your question?" She flipped ahead two pages in her book to more relevant material to her assignment. She scratched her shoulder.

Her green headed friend stood up to get to class, but parted with, "are you planning on becoming a bounty hunter?"

To which Veshna replied, "why would I _not_ use an alien armor that's designed for battle, in battle?" She packed up her book. A swift swing later, and her heavy backpack rested on her shoulders. Previously, she had to drag her pack to her locker, and take all except one or two books out and switch out often. Now, she could carry the entire stack the whole day on her back with no problems. Where previously, she looked to possess the strength of an elderly woman, she now possessed strength greater than the bodybuilders in the P.E. Classes. Surely, her Chozo DNA now stood out, with her physical impairments eliminated.

She found her seat and sat down. From two rows over, she caught one of the male students trying to disguise his ogling of the outline of her breasts against her shirt by pretending to read the corner of a page in the textbook. She smiled in his direction, which elicited almost a pinch-like response. He quickly jerked his head away, embarrassed as well as hot and bothered. She awaited the teacher's instructions.

A military briefing room on one of the Federation bases saw no less than forty of the high ranking officers watching video reconnaissance from several of the spy scan stations in the system. A general sat behind a desk, pointing out major observations on the hologram. "Men, your groups will each be rotated in and out of the security points to ensure that there is always security along the break lines," he instructed. "Xanman Mukam, being the officer whose group has one of the best military records of the past decade, your group will be stationed along the red points, because those are breached the most often."

Xanman saluted where he sat. "Sir!" He cringed inside as he thought of the red points—the worst parts of the outer border to defend—because it often meant having to stay longer than usual away from home. The last time he'd been stationed there, several sneak attacks were conducted by the then enemy in the space of eight hours. Only through the dogged efforts of exhausted men did the line hold. He didn't wish to repeat at his age. Still, he knew not of anything else to do. His orders stood. He just hoped that Samus would have more freedom of movement than he.

"We're expecting quite the show," the general reminded, "as the Space Pirates have returned for the first time in quite some time. If my memory serves correct, our military working with the support of Samus Aran managed to drive them into the void zone quite effectively. This time, we have better weaponry and better techniques at our disposal. Let us be successful!"

The group cheered and drove their fists into the air. Only Xanman didn't find the bravado uplifting. Perhaps, he figured, it was due to his family connections that he didn't have before. Still, war took on an entirely new meaning now that he had Samus and Veshna to worry about.

Samus, using a plasma torch, performed the last of the work of putting a new adamantium hydraulic system to her suit's joints. With the new energy-based liquid motion hydraulics, she figured her suit would possess almost three times the physical strength it had, and would enable her to lift in excess of thirty tons. Plus, she had added an extra coat of energy-resistant over-polish to the titanium alloy outer shell, after cleaning and painting over scratch marks on the body. To finish off the upgrade, she had spent quite a bit of money in adding a perpetual fusion reactor to replace her suit's power cells. It had cost her quite a lot of time and money, and not to mention physical labor—but now, her suit worked twice as good and had three or so times as much power as it ever had. Her rationale? Her daughter. _If Veshna has an organic symbiotic armor which has organic weapons, near perfect regeneration, and can effortlessly hold back tremendous amounts of force, then I'm seriously going to have to step up my game_, Samus rationalized. _I don't want the power getting to her head, or worse, the fame of outdoing me getting to her head_. She typed a command into her computer, and the suit opened up. She climbed inside and the suit closed around her. The familiar wires coiled around her head and synchronized with electrodes on her neck. The heads-up display showed everything in her field of vision, and the targeting sensors activated. The right forearm of the suit opened, and she reached into the opening and snatched her plasma cannon, attaching it to her suit's right hand. True to form, a energy reading of the shot's power displayed on her field of vision. She replaced the cannon back into the holster, and the suit's arm closed. The climate control system kicked in as her body heat rose, and the cool air circulated around to keep the internal chamber of the suit at seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit.

She stepped onto a platform in the fighting room, and a metal disc attached to a series of energy emitters descended from the ceiling. It came down and she pressed upward with her hands. "Strength test, begin!" she yelled, and immediately, the energy emitters on the ceiling pressed the disc downward, with increasing force. She pressed against the increasing weight until her suit indicated that its strength had been reached, at which point the computer automatically terminated the test and recorded the strength rating. "Thirty-two point eight tons," the console's robotic voice read aloud. Samus grinned as she stepped out of her power suit. It worked; the strength had tripled. Her previous record was ten point five tons. She deactivated the suit and stepped out of it. Surely she could at least keep up with her daughter, if nothing else.

Physical Education always marked the least favorite activity of Veshna Aran, at least before she found the Guyver. Now, it became her favorite, because of how easy it proved to be. Where before her degenerated muscles had made her frail and unable to compete even with the least active of her fellow students, now, she had the same muscularity as she would have if she never had acquired any of her medical problems at all. Plus, without atrophied muscles, the Chozo DNA in her allowed for athleticism none of her friends or enemies could hope to match. Calisthenics came much easier than than she'd ever imagined, more than doubling the number of abdominal crunches and push ups the nearest student to her in number. The laps, which previously required all of her effort just to finish, she now could complete in almost half the time of anyone else. It brought her cheers from her friends, and notoriety from those who were jealous.

The envy came out a lot during the activity, kickball. They had decided it would be conducted a lot like baseball, except the batter would kick the ball instead of hitting it with a bat. Her team managed to get three points in two innings before it was Veshna's turn. One of the girls, a redhead with a reputation as the most popular girl at their grade level, took it upon herself to prove a point. As the pitcher, she looked carefully at the batter, and dropped the ball. She delivered a furious kick, aiming for Veshna's head with all the force she mustered.

Veshna refused to duck. Instead, she jumped and kicked the ball in midair. She ran all the way around the bases while sticking out her tongue at the batter on the way around. _Wow! I never would have guessed that I'd be enjoying P.E. this much! Before, I'd be lucky if no one noticed me and I could just sit around and wait for awhile._ She sat down at the bench, not even breathing heavy. Moshana sat down.

"Wow, that was quite a kick, Veshna!" her friend cheered.

Corza took the other side. "You're telling me, Moshana. Veshna, I would've sworn you'd be viciously hurt by that kick aimed at you, but man, you nailed that one hard!"

Moshana poked Veshna on the side of her chest. "Maybe you store all of your newfound athletic ability in these," she joked.

Corza slapped the brown-haired girl's finger away. "Oh, don't be jealous. At least hers are _real_, unlike Miss Popularity over there." The two of them began laughing.

"I guess she doesn't eat a rich enough diet, Corza. Ha. She has to take pills to make the boys look at her, even. Ha ha."

Veshna rolled her eyes. "Seriously, can we quit gossiping? For God's sake, I get so tired when I hear about gossip." She wiped her brow. She looked forward to the day ending so she could go to the planet Samus would frequently test her skills at. Her mother and her would be engaging in a mock battle and various other training techniques, to prepare her for applying for her bounty hunter license. Truly, she felt this to be a day of days.

"Did you pick up the latest Firestorm album?" Corza small-talked with Moshana. "I thought it was awesome."

Moshana shook her head. "I heard a few songs off of it, but I really didn't think it stood up to their usual. Personally, I think Gathering Death really stepped up from their last material."

Veshna's train of thought got broken. "God, are you two still into that emotional punk crap? Seriously. I'd rather listen to classic stuff like Star Cluster & The Space Disease or metal from ten years ago. Please take your discussion about today's crap somewhere else."

"Haha, you're impossible. You know that, Veshna? Impossible."

"Say what you want about old music, but they don't write 'em like that anymore." She stood up as the game neared its conclusion. "See you guys later." Back in the locker room, she entered the shower and cleaned off, throwing her sweat-stained clothes into the auto-cleaner. Once she got washed off and dried, she put on some casual clothes again, and headed out the front door.

The transport pod took her home at a predictable time, and her mother stood at the front door. She exited the pod and took her backpack into her room. "You ready for this?" She glanced at her mother. "Hey, I'm just saying. You need to get into a different frame of mind than excitement. Battling is not fun and games, it's hell. If you weren't a necessity, I wouldn't be training you. I just want you to look at this as combat instead of fun." Samus realized she might be overreacting, since after all, her daughter had killed some of them without hesitation in defense of her fellow students. Still, she sensed that trigger-happy mood in her daughter that the bounty hunter herself had worked on for years to eliminate. She knew what could happen if you got too excited during combat.

"I'm ready, mom!" she cried, heading to the lower level where her mother's spaceship sat next to the alien craft recovered with the Guyver. Her mother activated her suit and stepped into it, the systems activating in a few seconds. Very quickly, the familiar sight stepped forward. "Mom, did you upgrade it? It looks a lot shinier."

"I put on another protective coat, and upgraded the servos. Now it's stronger and more energy resistant," Samus explained. "I still don't know if it'll keep up with your Guyver unit, though." She easily jumped onto the roof of her ship and descended through the entrance. Veshna summoned her Guyver unit and bounded up and into the ship as well. "It should only take a few minutes because my ship is faster than a lot of the Federation standard ships. Be ready."

Veshna nodded. "I will!" The bay opened and they took off, Samus providing her clearance to leave the planet when prompted.


	4. Chapter 4

Metroid Next: The Torch  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER FOUR

Having touched down on the surface of the mostly uninhabited planet—the few that lived here from one revolution of the orbit to the next were scientists—the bounty hunter and her daughter exited the ship through the lower hatch, in order. Samus had already donned her suit and its systems were activated and ready to go. She turned to Veshna, clad in a tight dark blue Zero Suit, a spacesuit designed for comfort and flexibility when worn beneath armor. The vocal transmitters relayed the mother's message to her daughter, "Veshna, usually, you put on your armor before you touch down on the planet. It's a safer procedure. But this time, I'll let it slide. Activate your armor." She had heard her daughter telling her that this Guyver existed in a subspace dimension, and the scar-like tissue on her back called it into this one, but she wanted to see it for herself.

Veshna made sure she stood far enough away from the ship that her blast field from summoning her Guyver would not damage the ship. She gritted her teeth. Thinking strongly, and all at once, about the unit, the coin-sized circular lumps on her back glowed brightly underneath the Zero Suit. A small shockwave erupted through the air, having the intensity of a sudden summer gust, as the illumination of bent space-time appeared around the girl. To her, inside the blast field, the outside looked distorted, like the curvature of a globe. To Samus, the space her daughter occupied looked like a glowing ball. From appearance to disappearance, the blast field lasted exactly nine one-hundredths of a second. It left behind Veshna, covered in the familiar bio-armor, and a burned away hole in which she stood, in the shape of a quarter-sphere curve. "Are you ready to begin, mom?" she inquired, her voice distorted as it left the sonic orbs where her mouth used to be.

Samus had a number of questions she wanted to wait until the training actually began to ask. Seeing as they were starting, she began asking. "Uh, Veshna? I notice you don't have a mouth, nose, or ears. How do you hear, smell, or eat?" _These were questions I have to know about_, the bounty hunter thought. _Because if she can't nourish herself or hear, she's screwed on the battlefield_. She stood at ease.

"I hear through the tissue on the side of my head where my ears were," she explained. "And as for smell? I can smell using any surface I need, all I have to do is think about it, and the control medal takes care of it. I don't have to eat or drink, either, because while I'm in my Guyver form, all of the energy and nourishment requirements are dealt with by the energy from the boost dimension." She knew her mother had important questions, but she wanted to get to training! Why continue asking now?

Samus felt a sigh of relief. _Good, she doesn't have to nourish herself,_ she realized. _Damn, now I wish I'd been so lucky as to find a Guyver unit. She can stay in her Guyver form indefinitely without needing a food supply, and she's got regeneration! Wait, that reminds me._ "Tell me, Veshna, what are the regenerative properties of your unit? You did talk about that to your classmates."

"My control medal remembers my DNA, remembers how my body is arranged, and it records all of my memories. The control medal could be by itself with only one cell still on it, and it could regenerate my entire body as is." She held up her left hand. "When my class was attacked on the planet, a Torizo's acid spit disintegrated my hand, and the unit regenerated it before I even unleashed my final attack."

Samus's helmet nodded. "Good to know. Ok, let's begin training."

The mother led the two of them into the darkness of one of the subterranean caves. Samus had a distinct advantage; she had used remote droids to map out these caves quite a while ago, whereas her daughter didn't have maps that could be pulled up in her vision. She walked a few steps ahead, ensuring that her daughter could be within the distance to at least hear her voice if she spoke. This she considered important, because less than forty feet into the cave, it became pitch black. The bounty hunter activated her night vision mode, and the darkness gave way to a green backdrop of images. She saw the walls and the slightly uneven floor. Samus knew of a specific spot in the area where she would make use of her daughter's perceived blindness. Veshna couldn't see anything except darkness. However, the sensory orbs, capable of moving back and forth across the top longitude of her head, could sense the electrical energy moving about inside of her mother's Power Suit, and could also differentiate from that her mother's bio-electrical signals as well as the electrical pathways of her mother's brain. _I may not be able to see the walls, but I can sense how far my mother is away from me,_ she noticed. _Hmm, I wonder..._ She decided to try something that might prove fruitless, or it might pay off. _Guyver, I need to see with my eyes what's going on_. Within a second of her thought process, the control medal responded. The thermal images she saw, gave her the walls and obstacles as well as the color indicating how hot—or cold, in the case of this cavern—they were. _Oh wow! I'm seeing in the infrared spectrum! Mother must think I'm blind and am following her because I can hear her footsteps. Better keep this hidden._ If she could, she would be smiling inside at the gap being narrowed after all.

"Alright, Veshna, we're going to start the training," Samus beckoned, the cave walls adding an almost unnatural echo. "Walk fifteen steps ahead, then stop." Veshna complied, maintaining awareness of her mother's position after she left her view. She dared not turn around, lest she reveal her lack of blindness. _I'm sorry if I hurt you, Veshna, but you have to learn_. Samus steeled her legs, then bounded into the air. She aimed to land behind her daughter and aim for a blow to the back. Coming down, she believed her aim to be true.

Quickly did the daughter whirl around and deliver a strong standing kick to her mother's suit's abdominal area. The mother landed on her back, then arose to a seated position, her daughter in a fighting stance with her eyes locked directly on target. It became obvious that her sight advantage had been false all along. "Veshna, how are you aware of my location?"

Veshna's voice had a proud tone to it. "There's no visible light, but as long as things have a temperature, I can see in infrared," she reminded. "Furthermore, my sensory orbs can detect any type of energy along the electromagnetic spectrum, including the electricity of your suit and the biological energies of your body. I was aware of you all along."

Samus grinned inside her suit. "Good. Your armor is obviously far more advanced than mine, but don't get cocky. Just because you can't get blinded in your Guyver form, doesn't mean you don't have to learn how to fight in the dark." She felt very good that her daughter had no crippling disadvantages other than her lack of skill, but she would drill the fighting ability into her nonetheless. "Unequip your Guyver, I'll take off the Power Suit. You've got to learn how to fight in the dark. Don't worry, I'll take it easy on you." She stepped out of her suit, setting it to voice activate when she was ready to enter it again.

Veshna complied, and the darkness entered her eyes. "Mom, how can you fight in this?"

Samus approached from behind. "I'll show you." Veshna spun to the voice, but found her legs kicked out from under her from behind her. Fortunately for her, her mother caught her. "There are ways. Use your ears better, and feel for slight changes in the wind. If an enemy is wanting to hurt you, they're going to go straight for a vital point. The air in caves like this is usually still. If you feel it shift, someone's coming." She pushed her daughter up to a standing position, then went for another strike. It only amounted to a light punch, because the bounty hunter knew how not to hurt someone. Veshna, however, decided she would use her own strategy.

The moment her mother tried once more to hit, she grabbed the hand before it could be drawn back. She spun around, keeping hold of the limb, and forced her mother down. Leaning on her back, she wrapped her legs around the waist and her arms around the head in a sleeper. _I might get hit, but I can lock on a hold once I have a grasp!_ She held tight.

"Good...Veshna," the mother gasped, "but you forgot something." Utilizing her Chozo athleticism, Samus stood up, effortlessly bearing the weight of her daughter on her back. On her feet, the mother had far more leverage. She elbowed her daughter in the ribs, causing her to let go. "Good strategy, you learn fast. But you've got to remember the situation. Most of the time, they'll have extra limbs to use to gain leverage to break a submission hold."

"Most of the time, I won't be out of my Guyver," Veshna reminded.

"True, but you have to learn how to fight," Samus shot back. "There are a lot of opponents you can't use holds on because of their anatomy." She backed up, circling to the right of her daughter. She hoped her daughter would make use of her other senses as she quietly moved forward and went for a strike to her right side.

Veshna, with her eyes closed, felt an ever-so-faint movement of the air, and from that, could guess where her mother likely aimed her attack. The air moved gently faster close to her body, meaning a limb flew towards her. She raised her right arm and blocked it; she could feel it was her mother's arm. Reaching under the punch, she delivered her left knee gently into her mother's abdomen, pushing her backward with the force. Guyver! she thought, her blast field illuminating the room for a brief moment.

"Good job, Veshna," the bounty hunter complimented. "You blocked my strike, then pushed backward to gain a second of time." She thought of how quickly her daughter learned things. "Although, if I was trying to kill you, you would have been best to incinerate me with that blast field around you when the Guyver summons." She backed closer to her power suit. "Suit, activate." The suit opened and she jumped into it. "You're aware of a lot around you because of the sensory orbs on your head. That'll provide you with a great advantage because you can't be surprised. I'm amazed that I don't have that much to teach you." She quickly amended her words. "I mean, I don't have to teach you much in the way of technical stuff. You still have to learn to be able to kill without hesitation."

Veshna looked at her mother. "I know," she admitted. "I just...don't like the thought." She didn't like this side of her mother. She knew that this was the thing that enabled her to survive and be as successful as she was, but it looked to her as if she had less humanity in this mode than as the mother of a daughter. This "all business" Samus seemed like a military officer.

"You're not supposed to. If you did, you'd be insane. But you'll have to learn to get used to it." The two walked out of the cavern together. The mother stopped a few seconds after her daughter did. A blip on her heads-up display's radar appeared. Her daughter must have detected it a short time before her. _Oh not this early. I'm still in the midst of teaching her and there's something on the attack._ Samus readied her plasma cannon.

A figure stepped out from behind the rock formations around the cave's entrance. "Hey, there, Veshna. Getting some training in?"

Veshna approached. "Father? What are you doing here?" As she approached, however, she sensed the electrical patterns of his brain, which indicated this was not him. The pathways of neurons had the tell-tale signs of a carnivorous parasite. Samus looked on nervously; her scanners told her this was a native organism. She wanted to see how her daughter would react. "Ok, you're not my father, who are you?" Her statement was met without response. The organism slowly approached. Her anger boiled at the thought of a hungry monster taking her father's form, but at the same time, guilt struck her because of its appearance. Although, she knew she had to kill it. Once it got close enough, it attacked, its human expression changing into a gaping jaw strike with sharp alien teeth. Acting quickly, she extended her blades and decapitated it. It then decomposed rapidly into a pile of purplish goo.

"That," Samus told, "was a predatory organism that adapts its form to look like something the prey is used to, to get close enough to strike." She put away her cannon. "Very impressive, you acted quickly. You have to do that in battle. I was going to have you fight one of these anyway, to instill that you absolutely have to act immediately, and think later."

"But, the whole time," Veshna admitted, "I know it was very quick, but I felt weird about killing something that looked like my father."

Samus patted her on the shoulder. "You're getting along just fine. Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're learning this fast." She summoned her ship from the computer on her suit. "Let's go home."

"Mom!" Veshna counter-argued. She waited until her mother faced her direction. "How can you be so sure...I mean, didn't I just sort of delay myself?" Her mother's rough, commanding nature seemed to fade with her daughter's concern.

"Veshna, stop attacking yourself. I'm positive that you'll be fine." She felt very nostalgic at that moment, because she struggled with the same kind of self-doubt at first. However, she never expected having to give a motivational speech. "You've shown me that, with a little more training, you'll be ready. Just trust my observation, ok?" The ship descended to their location and the main hatch opened up. Inside, both of them got into a much more comfortable state of mind. The daughter began to realize that her mother had it much rougher in the beginning since she had no one to instruct her, and was essentially forced to go about things on her own. Even in the later stages, when people were there to help her, it didn't improve things knowing that most of them simply tried to order her around. Samus detached her helmet, then opened her suit so as to step out. "Our next step, is to go to the Galactic Federation's main licensing branch so as to get you a security clearance of your own. If you're going to be battling, you can't be confined to having someone else take you around."

Veshna beamed at that thought. "You...you really mean it? I'll be cleared to leave the planet on my own?"

"You've got a ship now, don't you?" She shook her head as the two of them headed back to the main planet.

Back at home, Xanman, who had gotten home early from some patrol work along the outer edges, sat at the table and poured a glass of Vetrian ale. A strong yet smooth alcohol from beyond the arm of the galaxy, it had a distinct taste and a distinct difficultly in acquiring. If Samus were to find his bottles she'd get upset, he knew, but times like these almost required you to drink something strong. Just then, the proximity signal went off, indicating someone approaching. He carefully replaced his bottle into the hiding spot, and went to answer the door. "I'll be there shortly," he said, making a quick mental note of where all his guns were. At the main entrance, he slid it open slightly to see the man's face.

The visitor, a young man who looked no older than seventeen years of age, wore a relatively plain looking outfit. His hair, a slightly behind-the-times style in a medium brown, had several distinct spiky bangs which came a bit over his eyes. He looked rather inexperienced to the uneducated eye, but Xanman had seen enough battle to recognize eyes that hid a great deal of war history behind them. It was all in the way the kid looked at him. Now he was interested.

"May I ask who you are?" he inquired, trying to be polite.

"Mister Mukam," the young man shot back, "I know your wife, is the legendary bounty hunter Samus Aran, and that your daughter, Veshna, has a Guyver unit. I know quite a bit about the unit itself due to my personal history, and I need to discuss matters with them as soon as possible. My name is Sho Fukamachi."

Xanman squinted slightly. "So, what is your personal history with the Guyver?"

"I've been a Guyver myself for over a thousand years now," he explained. "You see, the Guyver renders you immortal as long as you aren't killed when you're vulnerable. I was born in the latter half of the nineteenth century."

Xanman stood aside, and opened the door. "Please come in. I'd like to hear more." He went over to the table, and poured himself another glass. "So, what drives you to seek out another Guyver?"

"Enemies are gathering, that aren't just space pirates," Sho explained. "There was an organization called 'Chronos' back in my era. I made sure every last remnant of them got destroyed. The Zoalords, psionic beings created by the same race that made the Guyver, I destroyed all of them. But, I found out later that they weren't the only ones the Creators made. Mother Brain, has found herself a new body and commands zoalords. If your daughter is going to be fully prepared for this battle, I'm going to have to help her out."

"You certainly have a look about you that says you've been in a lot of conflict," Xanman admitted, hiding the bottle as he heard the proximity warning again. Samus and Veshna came up the stairs. "Ah, Samus! This young man is a Guyver, and he apparently has something important to say to Veshna."

Sho stood up, and took his shirt off, displaying the tissue on his upper back. Then he put his shirt back on. "Veshna, I've found out through personal espionage that the space pirates have Zoalords among their ranks."

Veshna had something of a shock reaction. "But...that changes everything! How can we hope to stand up to them now?"

Sho had a quick answer. "Simple. The Guyver Gigantic. Let me show you." He bounded slightly into the air, summoning his Guyver unit, landing nimbly. Then, a secondary portal opened up, and his Guyver found itself surrounded by an even larger Guyver. This new unit stood almost ten feet tall, and the huge shoulder units for gravity were not quite a subtle reminder of its power. "This is the Guyver Gigantic. We're going to have to make one for you." He sent both of them back. "But, you'll have to be careful. It possesses a tremendous amount more power than the usual Guyver, and once you use it up, you have to let it recharge in the boost dimension until it can be used again. So it'll be your secret weapon."

Veshna wiped her hair. "I'll be with you in a moment. I have to take a shower." _What the hell is going on? Zoalords? How the hell did Mother Brain get Zoalords?_ She stepped into the shower, thinking of the new struggle coming up. She hadn't even begun yet and already she was thinking about battle. _Perhaps my mother was right._ She stood in the water.


	5. Chapter 5

Metroid Next: The Torch  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER FIVE

The problem with societies, Sho knew, was their inability to grasp that which is beyond their control. Few knew this quite as well as the young man born in the latter part of the twentieth century, many years ago. Thanks to the Guyver's genetic perfecting abilities, he hadn't aged a day since he found the unit at the age of 17. Still, despite being a teenager forever, he had seen horrors most adults hadn't. He'd fought foes that would make the greatest warriors in the universe quiver. The girl that stood beside him, Veshna, had the distinction of being the daughter of the greatest bounty hunter of all time. Despite having this honor about her, she didn't care much for the attached assumption. She'd lived most of her life frail and weak thanks to her Metroid genetics sprinkled amongst her Human/Chozo hybrid DNA. The Guyver had proved its genetic perfecting once again, rendering her Metroid incompatibilities compatible, a feat she never expected. She looked over at the young man, and saw the uneasiness in his eyes. Despite physically being almost the same age as her, he had the same air of warrior's mentality her mother did. She could only describe it as a form of nervousness tempered by years of battle against foes long dead by now. It struck her as a form of vigilance against enemies that could come at any time, except the foes they were waiting for hadn't been along in such a long time. He had more of an air of it than her mother, as his lifespan eclipsed her mothers' and fathers' lifespans combined, with plenty left over. She sensed something deeper than that, as well. He had a longing for something, that she never saw in her mother. An unfulfilled dissatisfaction, she saw.

He looked over at the teenager next to him as they stood behind the podium. She had the same physical age as him, yet he felt sorry for her, as the situation would ask more of her than she should have to deal with. She would have to gain the strength of character to throw away all sense of a normality, and fling herself into battle against an enemy which would not stop until they were both dead. It had been almost an eternity since his fateful battle against zoalord Archanfel, the leader of Chronos and his most powerful arch enemy. Yet every moment of it played in the video screen of his memory every time he opened his eyes. He remembered the look on Samus's face when he first saw her. She had adapted to a normal life. She saw battle of the ferocious kind, yet had the strength of character to be able to put down the eternal sword of vigilance and devote herself to a loving family. Deep down, he wished he could have that again.

"Mister Fukamachi, Miss Aran," said the councilman sitting behind a desk far in front of and above them. He shuffled some of his papers. "This meeting was called for several specific purposes. First of all, both of you have come across alien technology that has made you incredibly powerful." He cleared his throat. "Since neither of you have demonstrated malicious intent, and both of you have acted selflessly, we are not going to treat you as an enemy. Furthermore, recent events have demonstrated that threats gather, and you two seem poised to be our main advantage against them. I ask you to describe these 'Guyver' units you are equipped with." He pointed to the boy. "Mister Fukamachi?"

Sho cleared his throat and regarded them with his hands behind his back, a disarming psychological technique. "Council members," he spoke, "as I have stated, I have been alive since the later twentieth century, which is primarily due to the Guyver. Literally millions of years ago, an alien race we know only as 'The Creators,' descended upon planet Earth so that they could create the perfect bioweapons to use against a warlike race they were involved in war against. This experiment created humans, and the zoanoids were humans with battle enhancements, turning them into what would look like movie monsters. The zoalords were the generals with psychic control over the zoanoids, and the Creators themselves were psychically powerful over both.

"The Guyver," he continued to explain, "is a standard piece of equipment for this race. The Creators wore Guyver units so they could survive in some of the most hostile environments. They were frail and lacked much muscularity, because they were not evolved to be adaptable; their units solved this problem. It consists of a parasitic organism, and a control mechanism. The control mechanism emits a pulse of energy that controls the parasite, and the host mind controls the control medallion. The parasite can purge the body of poisons, make the host genetically perfect, and regenerate from virtually any harm, as well as enhance natural abilities many times. This process is called 'Bioboosting.' The humans were much more muscular and adaptable than the Creators themselves, because we were made to be weapons. A Creator attached a Guyver to a human, and the human was at least a hundred times as powerful as a bioboosted Creator. This frightened the Creators into leaving the planet."

The councilman thought a moment. "So, the reason the bioboosted human was superior, was because the host of one was superior physically to the host of the other Guyver?" Sho nodded. "But, wasn't the Creator mentally superior? If the Creators had psychic powers, wouldn't that make the unit stronger?"

"The Creators' mental attributes were enhanced, yes," Sho corrected, "but physically, the human was stronger and more durable. So the human would have no abilities of the mind, but the physical attributes were much greater enhanced." He looked at Veshna. "Miss Aran, here, has her mother's hybrid Chozo DNA within her, which makes her more athletic than a human is capable of; therefore, by default, her Guyver is more powerful than mine, in its ordinary form."

"Ordinary form?" A councilwoman inquired.

"I was referring to the base form; as I detailed in the report you asked for, there is the Guyver Gigantic."

She raised an eyebrow. "Explain, please."

"As you wish," he conceded. "In the heat of battle with a Zoalord, my body was destroyed, but my control medallion was still intact. My last conscious thought, before being vaporized, was to be given the power to defeat my enemy and protect my friends. The control medal interpreted that, and used the tissue of the living ship—the same type as Veshna discovered—to create a new Guyver unit capable of many times the power of even the base form Guyver. This is the Gigantic. At one point, it grew to fifty meters to combat a giant foe. The Guyver was, after all, designed to be adaptable to any situation."

"What are the requirements to equip a Guyver?" another councilman asked.

"You only need to be organic, living, and sentient. Theoretically any non-mechanical sentient race could bond with one. The only difference would be the power levels and weapons." He thought of how close some of the Zoalords got to achieving a Guyver unit. Such would've been disastrous, since the already powerful beyond compare Zoalord would be nearly God-like. Only the actions of vigilant groups and the brave had stopped such an occurrence.

"Mister Fukamachi," the main councilman said, "you have fought these zoalords before, and you say that Mother Brain has some of them under her control. What are these Zoalords like?"

"A zoalord is superior to a single base form Guyver. They have superior physical strength, and some of their energy techniques are greater. They are, however, more vulnerable than a Guyver because their regeneration isn't as great, and a full-powered blast from a megasmasher—the main weapon of the Guyver—will vaporize them."

"Thank you two for your cooperation with this emergency meeting," the councilman said. "Now, we will have a final vote. All in favor of granting the two of them a basic security clearance to have the necessary access to train and fight against the enemy?" One by one, all hands went up. "Your basic travel will be allowed to any planet in the system for necessary combat against the enemy. We will forward this information to the Galactic Federation in hope of securing you a needed clearance to fight them outside this system."

"Thank you," Veshna replied.

"Your support is appreciated," Sho added. "We will prepare ourselves for this coming crisis." The two of them prepared to exit the chamber. "That seemed to go well, wouldn't you say? These people are much more willing in a crisis than government in my era."

She chuckled as they headed down the halls of the main government building. "Are you joking? The only time these guys are willing to think openly is during a crisis. If the threat of annihilation didn't exist, we'd be studied endlessly." She looked at his gentle expressions overlaying his conflicted inner nature. If one ignored the aura of on edge watchfulness, his face carried the sense of calmer, more peaceful times, free of space pirates and creatures of combat. It made him slightly cute to her. Quickly, though, she remembered what he'd been through, and how much more mature than that he was.

"I figured as much," Sho replied. "So, you were really weak before you got a Guyver?"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh geez. Yes. I could barely lift forty-five pounds. It took effort to make it through a school day, and I don't mean that in a funny way. All this 'more athletic than a human is capable of' stuff is _brand new_ to me." She smiled at him. "I'm impressed that you've the body of a teenage boy and yet you can look me in the eye. I used to wonder if boys' necks craned at a certain angle downwards _naturally_."

"I wasn't thinking about your chest until just now," he replied, a slightly embarrassed expression on his face. He was desperately trying to cover his tracks.

She glared at him. "Now, even _I_ know that's bullshit."

"Ok, so I have been thinking about them," he admitted coyly, "but at least I can look you in the eye all the time. Respect, right?" He cupped his hands behind his neck. "Besides, why does it have to be about the chest? I'm more fond of the hips, myself."

"I knew the male mind would come out," she joked, play punching him in the arm.

They headed back to the house, Sho picking up lunch on the way back. Samus and Xanman were very eager to have a cooked meal by someone other than either of them. Veshna found the young man's culinary ability—even if it didn't live up to her mother or father's—very impressive. Most boys her age wouldn't be caught dead throwing together anything more complex than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. As they ate, Samus spoke of her battles in more detail than she had before. Some of the adventures startled Veshna, as she hadn't heard such brutality before, but ultimately recognized that danger had always been present, just in various forms. In response to that, Sho told some of his darker struggles against Chronos, and how he'd been an ordinary teen just like Veshna before being thrust into the heat of combat.

After eating, Sho and Veshna went down into the lower level to analyze the ship that she'd discovered, and possibly sync up with it to create a Gigantic similar to what Sho had. Such a weapon would be needed to combat zoalords. As the ship hovered above a heat vent from which it drew thermal energy, Sho stepped up to the large ship. "Wow," he commented, "it looks just like the relic I bonded with back on Earth. Let's step inside and see what we can do." As the both of them summoned their Guyver units, Veshna noticed how different his looked compared to hers. The hard plates of his were light blue while hers was orange. In response to a mental command, a hole opened up on the outer layer of tissue of the craft.

"Inside looks the same," Sho noticed. "Once we get to the control room, perhaps this thing can respond to mental command the way mine did." _I certainly hope we can get her into a Gigantic. Fighting a zoalord without one is treacherous._ The familiar hole in the floor opened, revealing the control room. As he slowly lowered into the chamber, he thought of the moment Agito and he unleashed their megasmasher attacks at Archanfel, only to get it reflected back at them. In the last moment of consciousness before waking up a year later, he commanded the mostly destroyed ship to grant him the power he needed to protect his friends. It responded by creating a new type of armor specifically for him; the Guyver Gigantic, it was several times more powerful than a base Guyver. It had been what enabled him to defeat Chronos. Mother Brain probably had greater technology at her disposal than did the organization in the past, so more firepower would be essential.

Veshna stood in the beam of light as the two control spheres of the ship orbited above her head. She saw the entire inside of the basement level of her house, using the outer surface of the ship as eyes. The ship communicated the status of itself—nominal—directly to her brain through the control medal. "Sho, why don't you summon your Gigantic?" He agreed, and a flash of light later revealed the ten foot tall golden colored Guyver Gigantic. Its massive shoulder gravity units and imposing size would be enough to strike fear into almost anything. Veshna decided to see what she could do. _Ship,_ she mentally requested, _I need you to construct for me, a unit similar to the one currently equipped to Sho Fukamachi._ She hoped her command would be heard.

A signal went from the ship to Sho's control medal. "I'm getting something," he told Veshna. "It's getting information. I think its working." Shortly thereafter, some of the flesh of the ship began forming into a ball, and twisting about. Veshna received another communication from the ship.

_Formation of unit commencing,_ it told her. _Construction shall be complete in three days._ She separated from the control of the ship for a moment. "It says it'll be ready with the Gigantic in three days' time. Do you want to train for awhile with the Guyvers equipped to give me some battle pointers?"

"I'd love to," he admitted. "Just take us to a planet nearby that has open areas to fight in. Battles of this magnitude require space."


	6. Chapter 6

Metroid Next: The Torch  
by Moonraker One

CHAPTER SIX

The two Guyvers, Sho and Veshna, stood several feet apart from each other on a relatively empty plain on a nearby system planet. They stood very close to the same height although their builds differentiated each other a bit. For not being very muscular, he had thicker limbs than her, although he knew that such was deceiving, as she possessed more athleticism than he. He'd fought lots of foes having a significant amount more power than he, but another Guyver posed unique differences. He attempted to mentally compensate as his experience told him to. Her stance betrayed her lack of battle readiness, as the uneasy shifting in her posture spoke of numerous flaws.

"Veshna," he told her, "you have to approach battle with zoalords and zoanoids with certain care. These are beings that look as human as you, yet you must kill them without hesitation, for they cannot be broken of the control over them. Also, a zoalord has much greater strength than us normally, so it is best to get in a sneaky kill or else to fight them as a Gigantic." He clenched his fists. "Since we're both Guyvers, it would be wise to protect your control medal. A wise opponent will go straight for it. It is vitally important. If you lose your control medal, you're dead. The parasite will eat you."

"Thanks for the advice," she commented. "I'm glad I have you to teach me things."

"I've been alive for enough centuries to know everything there is about fighting as a Guyver," he replied. "The one thing this technology guarantees is that if you survive a battle you'll have plenty of time to think about it." He sprung forth and swung for her neck. She would never learn battle techniques in time to be a threat to Mother Brain if he went easy on her. Some of her mother's training kicked in and she carefully ducked beneath the blow. She then tucked her head under his right arm and began pounding on his torso as she hoisted him into the air. With a strong push she sent him several feet back, where he landed on his feet. "That was good," he complimented, "to get an opponent away from you. In the moment before I'd have landed, though, you could have attacked with one of your weapons, if I was an enemy."

"I probably could have attacked you with a weapon while you were in the air," she said.

"You would've had to make an attack during that window," he replied. "Before your enemy had a chance to correct himself."

She marveled at how direct his style was, opposed to how her mother taught her methods that applied to simpler targets and gradually built their way upwards to more important ones. She'd learned about as much from training with Sho in a day's time as she learned from several days of Samus's effort. Deep down, she believed it had everything to do with her mother not ready to let her go. Sho, on the other hand, found it rather strange that for a girl who had lived with such a well-known warrior, Veshna herself had a stark lack of readiness. He had a basic idea of what might be her hardest obstacle to overcome, though.

"Veshna, here's a basic thing to look out for," he revealed. "To distinguish which are people, and which are zoanoids who have to be killed regardless of appearance, check the brain patterns. Zoanoids' electrical pathways are slightly different from a normal human's." He readied himself into a battle stance. "The battles got a lot easier for me once I learned the electric pathways of brains. A zoanoid has a specific pattern that no human has. Zoalords are even more obvious."

She nodded, then charged him. Since the previous attempt had been him on the offensive, she decided to take initiative. He very smoothly inched back to better support his weight, and when she aimed for his head he drove his shoulder into her torso and leaned back, hoisting her onto his shoulders. She spun around and pushed off, landing behind him. Almost instantly she attempted a clockwise roundhouse kick, which he ducked beneath. He cupped his hands for a gravity shot, which she nimbly moved to the side of. He hadn't counted on her speed, and it caused her to catch him in the right side with an elbow smash. This reeled him and allowed her to plant an uppercut on his chin. It launched him backwards, but he propelled off his hands and landed feet first. She charged him while he was recovering, yet surprisingly, he had enough time to turn around, catch her right arm, and perform a hip toss to get her on the ground at his feet. Before she could recover, he placed a foot on her chest.

"I won that one," he told. "Once you're in a position where you're prone, it's generally over."

She stood up. "Crap. And here I thought I was winning."

He popped his knuckles. "You were, until you underestimated my recovery time and I hip-tossed you. Never give your opponent a chance to try and get you in a position that leaves you open."

She sat down on a nearby rock. "So, I might have won if I'd stayed a distance away?"

He sat down as well. "You'd knocked me into the air, giving you almost a full second in which I was attempting to recover," he explained. "If you had hit me with a weapon during that time, I'd be dead. Instead, you went for a physical assault. The Guyver has phenomenal physical attributes; we can punch through a meter of concrete with one blow. We can run at vehicle racing speeds, even fly; but if you can, you should always finish the enemy off with a slight distance attack rather than a physical assault."

"Good advice," she admitted. "I'll remember that."

"We've been training for a few hours now," he advised. "We may not have much more time to rest before this system gets attacked. Let's go home and we can relax, and also catch up on the latest military reports."

She summoned the ship with a thought. "Sure thing, Sho."

The two of them left the planet they were on, and headed back to homeworld. It was an uneventful trip, and Sho knew from experience that it was merely the calm before the storm. After the ship landed on the property of her parents, they disembarked and disengaged their units, reverting to their previous clothes. A short walk up the steps from the basement, near the rear entrance, and they were in the kitchen once more. They got a bit of water from the sink and sat down. Veshna took a deep breath as she slowed her pulse from the earlier battle. "Tell me something, Sho," she said.

He took a sip and looked up. "Hmm?"

"How did you come across the Guyver unit? Did anyone prepare you for fighting?" She leaned on her arms, folded on the table. She had to know more about him. Sure, she trusted him, but she had to know more about her training partner and fellow Guyver.

He sighed; dredging up memories from a thousand years ago, not many of which were positive, were always a taxing experience. "No one ever prepared me for anything," he admitted. Looking at her, she saw the seriousness in his eyes; it frightened her a bit. "I was an ordinary seventeen year old high school student. Nothing more complex than ordinary school work ever happened to me until I was walking home from school one day." He coughed, and then took another sip. "It was my friend Tetsuro and I, we were unwinding from a fairly ordinary day at school, when all of a sudden we hear something explode. Then, this _thing_ lands near us, and neither one of us knows what the hell it is." He blinked. "It was the Guyver, of course. But neither of us had ever heard that before. We sure as hell heard it a lot _after_ that."

"So, who did you have to fight?" She was intrigued; hanging onto every word he said.

"Chronos. An organization posing as a company. Their leader was a being named Archanfel, who was the leader of the Zoalords .We spent the next few years fighting them and almost dying several times, until we finally defeated them. This was the master plan Archanfel had in mind: he had been abandoned on Earth by the alien race that made all of this, the Guyvers, the zoanoids, everything. He was going to zoaform all the beings on Earth, then load them onto these Ark ships, then fly for millions of years until he found the Creators, and after that he would fight them until they gave him an answer to why he was abandoned."

She stared at him. "That's a really stupid reason for wanting to take over a planet."

He rolled his eyes. "I know. When I found out _that_ was the reason my father died, and the reason for all my suffering, I was really pissed."

"How did your father die?"

He swallowed a moment. Then he looked at her. "I had to kill him."

She startled. "What?"

"He was captured, and a fellow Guyver and myself went in to rescue him, and we found out he was zoaformed against his will. A zoanoid must obey the will of a zoalord, you know? So another Zoalord named Barcus orders my father to attack me. I was not about to attack him, even if it meant me dying. Then he grabs my head and tears my brain out."

She cringed. "How did you survive that?"

"The Guyver can regenerate the entire body from a single cell, remember? It downloads the memories of the host so that it can restore you as if nothing had ever happened. But, without the host to control the Guyver, it goes into hyper-defense mode. Acting on the control medal's internal programming, it automatically fights to the death anything that threatens it in an attempt to keep the host safe while regenerating. So, of course, my brain regenerated in a matter of a few minutes; unfortunately, by that time, the unit had already fired a megasmasher."

She bowed her head. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "It was a thousand years ago. I've learned to deal with it."

She took a serious risk by asking a more personal question. "Did you ever…fall in love? I mean, I dated once; it didn't turn out that good. Did you ever?"

He stared at her for a moment, trying to analyze the question. It brought back sad memories, akin to his father's death. "Yes. Her name was Mizuki. After the defeat of Chronos, I was ready to rid myself of the Guyver unit, so that I could grow old with her and die. Before I had the chance, she died of a bioweapon left behind by a remnant of Chronos." He gave a sorrow-filled chuckle. "No point in growing old after that."

She sat silent. She didn't want to bring up any more sad details of history. He looked at her, and instantly recognized what she felt. It pained him to see her saddened by his tale. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't you worry," he said. "After we beat these space pirates, nothing bad is going to happen to you. You're going to have a full life filled with happiness. So don't cry over me."

Veshna opened up the device on the console just outside the kitchen. It always fed the latest military reports in from high command. Samus always got the information ahead of others because of her long and convoluted history with the Federation. She read of the latest report; it spoke of questionable energy activity on a planet just outside the system. That meant possible space pirate activity.

"Sho!" she shouted across the room. "Let's go! There's possible activity on a planet just outside the main system!"

He got up from the chair. "The first foothold is always one of the most important places to attack."


End file.
